Fluvial Remote Sensing research group member Devin Lea, now pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, has just had another paper accepted for publication. The article introduces an innovative, spatially explicit approach to characterizing geo-referencing error in time series of aerial photographs and examines the implications for studies of channel change. Keep your eyes open for "Refining measurements of lateral channel movement from image time series by quantifying spatial variations in registration error," coming soon in the journal Geomorphology.

Our collaboration with Zhigang Pan, Craig Glennie, and other colleagues with the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping continues to bear fruit. Zhigang's latest article, titled "Fusion of LiDAR Orthowaveforms and Hyperspectral Imagery for Shallow River Bathymetry and Turbidity Estimation," has been provisionally accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. Congratulations, Zhigang!

The AGU conference is a popular, highly regarded venue for disseminating research findings from across a broad spectrum of Earth science. Five members of our team traveled to San Francisco and presented the posters listed below. Our work was well received and a good time was had by all.

Lea, D.M., and Legleiter, C.J. Refining measurements of lateral channel movement from image time series by quantifying spatial variations in registration error.

Richardson, R., and Legleiter, C.J. Saving Salmon Through Advances in Fluvial Remote Sensing: Applying the Optimal Band Ratio Analysis (OBRA) for Bathymetric Mapping of Over 250 km of River Channel and Habitat Classification.

Our research on the effects of reservoir development on south central Wyoming's Savery Creek has been published in the current issue of River Research and Applications. To view the paper, please visit the journal web site or download from our publications page here.

Dr. Legleiter will be leaving the University of Wyoming at the end of 2015 but will remain associated with the Department of Geography as an adjunct faculty member. This affiliation will allow Legleiter's unique course on Remote Sensing of Rivers to be offered online in Spring 2016. The new web-based format will include video lectures and updated lab exercises. For more information about the course, please refer to the announcement posted here.

Research on Fluvial Remote Sensing has taken our group around the world, including truly unique environments like the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. On Wednesday, October 28, Ph.D. student Brandon Overstreet's field work on supraglacial streams was featured on the cover of the New York Times. This collaborative effort with UCLA involved measuring discharge every hour over a three-day period to better understand the flux of meltwater across the surface of the ice sheet. The compelling scientific question is the fate of that water after the flow disappears into moulins - is the water retained within the ice sheet, stored at the bed, or transmitted rapidly to the ocean? These studies have important implications for estimates of sea level rise. The New York Times coverage is excellent, with some impressive interactive graphics - check out the story here.

Dr. Carl J. Legleiter, leader of the Fluvial Remote Sensing research group, has accepted a position with the USGS' National Research Program, starting in January 2016. He will join the Geomorphology and Sediment Transport Laboratory in Golden, CO, and continue to conduct research on remote sensing of rivers. Although the decision to leave the Department of Geography at the University of Wyoming was difficult, the opportunity to devote more time and energy to research and to begin translating some of the techniques we have developed into practical application proved to be too good to pass up. Legleiter remains committed to his current, outstanding group of graduate students and will retain adjunct faculty status so that he can help them complete their degrees. For the time being, however, we will not be able to accept any new graduate students for 2016. Overall, this move to the USGS should open exciting new possibilities to further advance Fluvial Remote Sensing.

On September 25, Fluvial Remote Sensing lab member Toby Stegman successfully defended his Master's thesis: "Stream Restoration Monitoring Utilizing Structure-from-Motion Photogrammetry, Teton Creek, Idaho." Toby's work describes innovative SFM techniques for mapping bed topography and sediment grain size and presents an example of how these tools can be applied for river restoration project monitoring. With the defense behind him, Toby will now be working on completing the thesis and preparing a manuscript to be submitted to River Research and Applications. Congratulations, Toby, on a job well done!

The Fluvial Remote Sensing research team conducted another field campaign in September, this time closer to our home in Laramie. Data collection on several of the alpine lakes in the nearby Snowy Range involved measurements of depth, water surface elevation, spectral reflectance, bottom composition, and water column optical properties. These data will be used in combination with a beautiful WorldView-2 satellite image acquired on September 10 to characterize changes in water storage since the previous image was obtained on August 7. New lab members Elizabeth Dilbone and Ben Kraushaar, along with seasoned veterans Ryan Richardson and Toby Stegman, contributed to the field effort. Data analysis is now underway, so stay tuned for results from this study.

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This material is based upon research supported by the Office of Naval Research under Award Number N000141010873: "Measurement and Mapping of Riverine Environments by Optical Remote Sensing" to the University of Wyoming.